HISTORIC CHURCH NEEDS ROOF
Fundraiser for church built in 1885
Red and blue lights from the stained glass windows alight on the pews of the 133-year-old church at Heritage Village and amaze Grade 2 students.
Brides still walk up the church aisle as they did beginning in the late 1800s in a village now lost to time.
“It’s a pretty amazing place. You think of all the people who have been there,” said Lisa Wacheski, Canadian Transportation Museum and Heritage Village curator. “It’s the history. You feel it when you’re inside.”
The 1885 Bethel United Church, which was moved to Heritage Village in 1978, needs a new roof. The museum on the Arner Townline turned to online fundraising for the first time to raise money for a roof and, if possible, paint to repair the ceiling inside and refresh the outside white clapboards. The church has cedar shake shingles but the museum doesn’t know how much it can raise or what will be most feasible to protect the building in the long run. At first, the goal was $10,000 because the museum had applied for a provincial grant. That fell through so now the museum needs to raise $30,000 to $40,000, said Wacheski who also serves as the museum’s manager of education. By Tuesday afternoon, $400 had been donated. The museum, which relies on about 100 volunteers, has an annual budget of close to $500,000 but most of that is raised through visitors and education programs. It doesn’t have any extra funds for a roof so media and event manager Erin O’Brien said they decided to try online GoFundMe fundraising for the first time. “We’ve got to look for another stream,” O’Brien said of funding.
The church’s history started with a settler, Isaac Elford, who bought land near the Arner Townline and Concession 6 in 1872. The village that popped up there was called Elford.
Wacheski said at that time a few families of settlers would soon make a village with the three pillars: a church, a school and a general store.
Bethel Elford Methodist Church was built in 1884 and opened in 1885. In 1925, it became a United church. It closed in 1967 and was donated in 1978 by the Elford Women’s Institute and was moved to Heritage Village.
“It’s very plain but it’s beautiful,” Wacheski said.
The museum uses the church for education programs and rents it for about 20 weddings a year. O’Brien said people want a small, intimate setting — the church holds about 100 people — and it is non-denominational. She said wedding themes have included medieval, country and one wedding through the decades where guests dressed in attire from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. “It’s like they’re going back in time when it wasn’t all glitz and glamour. It was when things still meant something,” O’Brien said. The family ties remained after the wood frame building was moved to the village that has about 15 buildings dating back to 1829. One descendent, Robert Elford, would come every year to check on the church until he died at age 91 at Christmas 2016. People who donate directly to the museum can receive a tax receipt. The online fundraising campaign is at gofundme.com/ctmhv.